Yup. Vote buying and self-votes are breaking down the economic engine of Steemit.
They are just rent-seeking behavior that adds no direct value to the platform.
I think some reforms are necessary:
- Make delegated power worth less than non-delegated
- Enforce a cap on how much power can be delegated
- Improve the discovery features of Steemit (Where are communities?)
- Explore why the Promotion system is not effective
- Adjust payouts to better reward minnows that catch an engaged audience instead of just catching a signal whale-bot vote.
Enforce a cap on how much power you can delegate sounds like communism. It's a not a good idea to move into that direction. That would make people work less. It's clear that automated stuff is here to stay.
Could you elaborate? How would some limit on delegation cause people to work less?
My theory is that if one cannot simply hand away their power to a bot, then they have to work to earn a return on their power. That work would imply curating and engaging in the platform.
Today, you already have people doing no work and adding nothing to the platform aside from just rent-seeking. They simply delegate their power and collect an ROI with no activity whatsoever.